I am trying to research the Carolina Midland Railway Co. It appears that this line was constructed in the early 1890's starting in Lexington, South Carolina. Does anybody have any information about this line and if its tracks are still in use? Thanks.

-- Andy Rosenbaum (arosenba@nmlrp.com), January 08, 2001

Answers

This is one of the lines I had been researching. The short answer to your Q is that it has been mostly abandoned exc for a fairly long spur remaining out of Cayce serving industries and a sand mine, and a couple of short spurs at Allendale and (I think still) Hardeeville.

I contributed two web pages on this system to Jimmy Summer's Abandoned Railroads of the US site. See http://www.abandonedrailroads.homestead.com/sc_southern_edmund_hardeeville.html and http://www.abandonedrailroads.homestead.com/SC_Southern_Perry_Batesburg.html

It never went anywhere near Lexington. The original BA&N went to Seivern in eastern Aiken County to serve a kaolin mine, while the Barnwell line served cotton platforms and a cottonseed oil works in Barnwell. As best I could tell, it was the CMR that tied them together. The old Union station in Blackville was originally sited at the diamond where the CMR crossed the SC & Ga Charleston-Hamburg/Augusta line that was also acquired by Southern in 1899.

Even before the CMR was formed there had been interest in extending the line to Batesburg on the Southern Columbia-Augusta line. The CMR's treasurer formed a separate company, the Sievern & Knoxville, to acquire the Seivern portion of the line several miles north of Perry and continue construction north. I am given to understand it was not completed until Southern came in and took over the CMR, the S&K, and the SC & Ga. The Cayce-Perry branch was started by the CMR about 1899 and completed by Southern. The Perry Batesburg section was abandoned in the 1930's, definitely gone by 1940.

It was concerning this line and the relationship between Southern and ACL that I posted the thread "ACL relationship w/ Southern on Cayce, SC - Hardeeville, SC line" in this forum.

As best as I could determine, Southern abandoned the Hardeeville-Furman section between 1963 and 1966, after which time it probably only served local traffic. Around 1981 it was abandoned back to Blackville. Then within a few years Southern abandoned the Branchville-Aiken section of the former SC & Ga, and apparently at the same time abandoned the former CMR back to Springfield a few miles to the north of Blackville.

There were a few small industries and oil distributorships that apparently used the line in Springfield, Salley, and Pelion, that needed a little more time to switch over to trucks but the fate of the line under the Staggers Act was inevitable. By about 1991 it was abandoned back to Edmund a few miles west of Cayce, where it now ends in a micro-yard serving the sand mine just east of Edmund. Some industries and an automobile receiving/unloading facility still use the line in Cayce.

-- Mitch Bailey (curufin936@mindspring.com), February 29, 2004.

To quote from page 22 of Richard Prince's book on the Southern (1970 edition): "CAROLINA MIDLAND owned 54 miles of track from Allendale via Perry to Sievern, S. C. It was formed in 1891 as a consolidation of the BLACKVILLE, ALSTON & NEWBERRY RR and the BARNWELL RY. The former road had been built in 1888 and the latter in 1882. The CAROLINA MIDLAND RY extended the lines southward from Barnwell to Allendale in 1891. In 1899 the Southern acquired the road and utilized 46 miles of it in establishing a new route between Columbia, Savannah and Jacksonville. During 1899 and 1900 the line was constructed between Cayce, near Columbia, and Perry (31 miles) and from Allendale to Hardeeville, S. C. (51 miles). For legal reasons the Southern waited until 1902 before actually leasing this property. Tracks of the ACL RR are used by the trains of the Southern from Hardeeville through Savannah to Jacksonville, via J

-- Larry Brennan (lpbrennan@aol.com), April 04, 2001.